Perry Mehrling: What Does Repo Do? And Can We Do Without It?
Repo is the system that failed during the financial crisis, leading the Fed to ride to banks’ rescue. Is repo any safer now?
Read more...Category Archives: Risk and risk management
Why is China finding it hard to fight the markets?
China’s market drama started in June this year with the collapse of the Shanghai stock exchange, followed by frantic interventions by the Chinese authorities. As if the estimated $200 billion already spent on propping up stock prices were not enough, China found itself in another battle with the market, defending the RMB against depreciation pressures after the PBoC devalued the RMB by nearly 2% on August 11. The cost of the foreign exchange intervention to keep the RMB stable is estimated at $200 billion.
Read more...Louis Proyect: A Brief Response to Joe Firestone on IT/Grexit
Why believing that there must be an easy way for Greece to pull of a Grexit does not make it so.
Read more...Wolf Richter: Foreign “Smart Money” Frets about Turmoil at Home, Flees, Plows into US Housing Bubble 2, Thinks it’s a “Safe Haven”
Lambert: Just what we need; more 1%-ers. And if turmoil in emerging markets keeps up, we’ll have more of ’em, as conditions “at home” sharpen. By Wolf Richter, a San Francisco based executive, entrepreneur, start up specialist, and author, with extensive international work experience. Originally published at Wolf Street. Wealthy, very nervous foreigners yanking their money […]
Read more...“How Complex Systems Fail”
Complex systems are prone to catastrophic failure. Have we come to embrace policies and values that increase the odds of failure?
Read more...Louis Proyect: Once More on IT and a Return to the Drachma
Why selling magic sparkle ponies, in the form of presenting a conversion to the drachma as easy when it isn’t, makes for bad IT and even worse policy prescriptions.
Read more...William J. Astore: Seventy Years of Military Mediocrity
How the US has developed military muscle at the expense of brainpower.
Read more...Power 8, Sponsor of Everton FC, Fulham FC and RCD Espanyol, is a $250Mn Pyramid Fraud
Power 8, Sponsor of Everton FC, Fulham FC and RCD Espanyol, is a $250Mn Pyramid Fraud.
Read more...Libor Trader Sentenced to 14 Years for Market Manipulation. So What About His Bosses?
While it’s gratifying to see former UBS trader Tom Hayes go to jail for large-scale Libor bid rigging, his bosses had to have known what he was up to. So when will we see their indictments?
Read more...More on the Systemic Risk of Bank IT Systems
Why financial firm IT is a bigger and more imminent source of systemic risk than you might think.
Read more...Bank IT, Grexit, and Systemic Risk
Why bank IT is more of a mess than you possibly imagined, and why that matters.
Read more...Perry Mehrling: Flash Crash Explained by HFT
The official report on the October 15, 2014 “Flash Crash” raises some questions which unfortunately it does not answer.
Read more...The Decisions of July: The European Elite Goes to War in 1914
Elite decision-making before “the Guns of August,” with suggestive parallels to decision-making in the Greek Debt Crisis.
Read more...Groundhog Day for NZ FSPs: Bryan Cook of Asia Finance Corporation is a Crook, but Does NZ’s FMA Care?
Why is it Groundhog Day? Back in 2011, I wrote a seriously messy blog post about dodgy New Zealand FSPs (Financial Services Providers), their dodgy web sites and people and addresses, and the evidently nonexistent oversight of all of this by the NZ Ministry of Economic Development and the NZ Companies Office. To my surprise, […]
Read more...Time to “Fire” Mary Jo White: SEC Covers Up for Bank Capital Accounting Scam Promoted by Her Former Firm, Debevoise
Pam Martens and Russ Martens published a mind-boggling expose yesterday on how the SEC is refusing to stop an abuse by major banks that increases systemic risk.
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